A Controversial Debut for Lohan in Paris
“PAS possible,” said Fabien Baron, the noted French art director shortly after the Emanuel Ungaro show on Sunday. “Call the fashion police!”
When
Lindsay Lohan’s controversial appointment as artistic adviser of the French label was announced last month, Mounir Moufarrige, the new chief executive of Ungaro, said his intention was to give the aging brand the equivalent of “electric shock treatment.” But based on the reaction to the collection that was shown here at the
Louvre, the first designed by Estrella Archs with Ms. Lohan’s advice, he achieved more than that: Editors and buyers who were present said it was they who were shocked.
Some of the models appeared in loose-fitting jackets that flapped open to reveal that they wore sequin-covered pasties, in the shape of hearts, on their breasts, leaving several people in the audience aghast. A few dresses looked as if they had been painted onto the models.
“We love Lindsay Lohan — as an actress,” Mr. Baron said. “Period.” At the next show, Greg Kessler, a photographer for Style.com, was snapping pictures of front-row guests and asking them to pose as Ms. Lohan by holding up their hands, ashamedly, in front of their faces.
Celebrity fashion designers have, until now, been a mostly American phenomenon, with lines targeted to department stores under labels by
Jennifer Lopez,
Gwen Stefani and
Justin Timberlake, among many others. But
Ms. Lohan’s arrival at a 45-year-old Paris house known for $1,500 dresses and a tradition of couture craftsmanship is entirely different, something akin to a McDonald’s fry cook taking the reins of a three-star Michelin restaurant.
The day before the show, Ms. Lohan was staring at herself in a mirror in Ungaro’s grand offices on the Avenue Montaigne, a stone’s throw from the ateliers of Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy and other famous French labels. She picked up a black and white scarf and tied it around her head, then replaced it with a black one, and then clumsily stuck a red sequin-covered heart to the side of her head while a team of designers watched her. Ms. Lohan represents a modern version of a fashion muse. She is an actress who is being paid — with a deal reported to be worth millions — to serve as artistic adviser, most unlike the classic image, for example, of Loulou de la Falaise, the dear friend of Saint Laurent and daughter of the model Maxime de la Falaise, who would gently nudge a bow and whisper to the great couturier that it looked chicer that way.
“This is just so cool,” Ms. Lohan said, turning her attention to a white minidress splattered with sequins. “It needs more rhinestones, just so it pops.” Off to the seamstress it went. Pointing to another white dress, she said: “I call it Michelle Pfeifer in ‘Scarface.’ I was just in my office sketching for next season. I was here until, like, one o’clock last night.”
With French fashion in a state of disarray due to the ongoing effects of the recession, which has already claimed at least one couture house in
Christian Lacroix, several editors here at Paris
Fashion Week have expressed concerns that other European houses may attempt to further their associations with celebrities like Ms. Lohan just to generate publicity. Many companies already have exclusive deals to dress actresses or feature them in their ad campaigns, like Chanel with
Nicole Kidman and
Giorgio Armani with
Cate Blanchett. But no other has hired a celebrity to influence design, and the degree of Ms. Lohan’s involvement became clear during a preview when a seamstress, speaking in French, complained to Ms. Archs that she did not want to make further changes to a dress until “Mam’selle” had made up her mind.
Since the retirement five years ago of Emanuel Ungaro, who was famous for making the color fuchsia chic, the house has languished with a revolving door of designers, the last of whom, Esteban Cortazar, quit when Mr. Moufarrige first suggested hiring Ms. Lohan as his collaborator. Ms. Archs, a Spanish designer who also shows a signature line in Paris, was hastily hired to replace him. The label now has sales of about $200 million from fragrance and less-expensive lines sold in Asia, but the runway collection, Mr. Moufarrige said, has been losing money for years.
Ungaro’s latest maneuver was at least effective in drawing a heavy-hitting audience to the show on Sunday, as the editors in chief of Harper’s Bazaar, In Style and Elle and buyers from Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s and Bergdorf Goodman all attended. But they scrambled for the exits as soon as the show ended, with little applause as Ms. Lohan and Ms. Archs took a bow together on the runway. One retail chief said he had asked for a ticket only because he thought the show would be a spectacle.
“You know,” Glenda Bailey, the editor of Bazaar said before a question was half asked, “if you don’t mind, I have to run out the door.”
Virginie Mouzat, the fashion director of the French newspaper Le Figaro, described Ms. Lohan’s hire as a nonevent from a fashion perspective, but she said she was concerned about what it might portend. “Maybe this is the next step of using people by fashion brands,” she said. “But when you look at her own style, for me, she is not really relevant first, regarding fashion and second, regarding a couture house like Ungaro. Maybe she would be relevant for Kookai,” she said, referring to a label that is considered, among the fashion elite, as “not us.”
Mr. Moufarrige, during an interview in his office above the Ungaro store on Avenue Montaigne, argued that the controversy could still be good for the brand. He pointed out that he has made controversial hires in the past that ultimately were vindicated, noting that he replaced
Karl Lagerfeld with
Stella McCartney, the daughter of
Paul McCartney, at Chloé in 1997. Though Ms. McCartney’s appointment indeed ruffled feathers among the French design establishment, she did have formal design training and has since gone on to develop a successful signature line.
“I’ll tell you one thing on the level,” he said, blowing cigarette smoke toward the blue oval ceiling, which was designed by Mr. Ungaro when it was his office. “I am crazy. Someone said there are not enough crosses to put me on.”
While he acknowledged that his main goal in hiring Ms. Lohan was to generate publicity, he said he also believes she will excite consumers. He said he was actually surprised the criticism had not been even more negative.
The market for luxury goods has been so bad, he said, that hiring a traditional designer would not make enough of a difference to get people into his stores. With retailers cutting their orders by 30 percent or more this year, there was little chance that Ungaro could survive without getting more attention. He said he did not believe that Ms. Lohan’s history of well-publicized personal problems would get in the way of her job at Ungaro or have a detrimental impact on the brand.
At that moment, his cell phone rang. It was a security guard telling him that Ms. Lohan and her sister, Ali, had gone downstairs into the store to try on some clothes. The store, in fact, was now mobbed.
